Excuse me
          If I may
          Turn your attention
          My Way

          I'm really well acquainted
          With the span of your brow
          If you didn't know me then 
          You'll know me now

These are the lyrics to the opening song of Suzanne Vega's fourth album, entitled 99.9F, coming out in September 1992. This album marks a stylistic departure for Suzanne, who has already proven herself to be wildly diverse, working with such artists as Lenny Kaye from the Patti Smith Group, Philip Glass, Arthur Baker, They Might Be Giants, The Lemonheads, and the ubiquitous DNA of "Tom's Diner" fame.

Suzanne rose quickly through the New York folk scene in the early eighties. Her first album was released in 1985. With each album she broke new territory, as the reviews below confirm. With this fourth album, 99.9F, produced by Mitchell Froom, she gets rid of any preconceived ideas that might be left.

          99.9 Farenheit degrees
          Stable now, with rising possibilities...
          It could be normal but it isn't quite

             99.9F - September 1992

            Tom's Album - Released September 1991

            Days of Open Hand - Released April 1990

            Solitude Standing - Released April 1987

            Songs From Liquid Days - 1986

            Pretty In Pink - 1986

            Suzanne Vega - Released April 1985

            Suzanne Vega - Released April 1985

                                             - John Rockwell,
                                                       The New York Times, April 1985

                                              -Rolling Stone, November 1989, 
                                                       The 100 Greatest Albums of the 80's


           Solitude Standing - Released April 1987

                                               - Sounds (U.K.), May 1987

                                                
          Days of Open Hand - Released April 1990

                                               - X-Press (Australia), June 1990

                                                -**** Rolling Stone, April 1990

"...Some people are cultivated roses, but I'm this tough dandelion. I felt like a weed, and I was proud of it. Weeds are just there. They're tough. They stick around... They're not anything splendid...

"...I always considered my voice plain and fine-no big deal... the kind of voice that you use to sing to your children or your brothers and sisters. I like to think of it as a pencil. It's very useful. It's ordinary. Everyone's got one...My voice is like a little kid singing a tune. She's putting on her socks and she's singing. That's all."

                                                -MUSICIAN - 1990

"One journalist asked me, 'Isn't it exhausting to hold that deadpan throughtout one song? I thought, one song? I hold that deadpan throughout my entire life."

                                                -NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS, UK - 1987

"...I never faked it. I never said, 'I'm going to be Top 20, and this is what you have to do to be Top 20: show a lot of skin, be bright and cheerful and aggressive' - if anything, I've done everything exactly the opposite. I wore black for most of my singing career, and refused to be cheerful on stage to the point where it irritated the audience sometimes. I do like to make them laugh."

                                                -L.A. WEEKLY - 1987 

"I see myself as a little bit left of center of the mainstream. I think the mainstream goes up and down depending on what year it is; some people say oh she is big, oh she's small. But I'm just playing on the sideway.

...My role is to have a life and to express things from a very street-level point of view. This is what I really believe. I don't think it's my job to express a pop star's life. So this means that I have t olead a normal life, which means walking around, talking to people, experiencing things and struggling through things. It's not like riding around in limousines and that kind of thing. That's not interesting to me and that doesn't give me anything to write about; it doesn't help me; it doesn't inspire me to write songs."

                                                  -LANGUAGE - 1991 

"...boys in black leather jackets and shaved heads, middle-aged men in pin stripes, literate boys with notebooks under their arms and girls who are gay or whatever..."

                                                 -ROLLING STONE - 1987                                      

"...It makes me feel that I've done a good job if I can reach people from all different levels. That's why I was pleased that "Tom's Diner" did what it did, cause suddenly all these black kids in the neighborhood where I grew up in New York were listening to my songs. So it had this impact, and I'm happy when I feel that the songs can go into all different levels of society. That's what I'm aiming for."

                                                  -SONGTALK, PART 2 - 1992

"...I get my inspirations from things that are ordinary and not precious at all, like children's nursery rhymes, and games that kids play in the streets. Things that I had played as a child; sing-song rhymes and rhythms that you make up to amuse yourself while you're jumping rope, or if you're teasing somebody else... That's where I first got a sense of words, what they were about.

But I also use other things. Medical textbooks, science textbooks. Pieces of information...Whatever rings true to me is where I'll find it...

I love songwriting. To me, there's all these elements that are mixed into it, of magic, spells and prayers... children's games...science...I like to bring all these things together so it's all one. You can draw from any source...

I have a problem with specifically confessional songwriting. I think you have to craft it in some way. I don't think you can come on stage and blurt out yourinnermost feelings. My niece can blurt out her innermost feelings. She's four years old. I wouldn't want to pay $25 (laughs) to go see her do that. You need to put it in a form...

As a songwriter, I need to be able to say those things that are part of everyday life: I need you, I want you. War must end. How do you get to say them without sounding like a jerk or sounding simplistic, that's my next challenge...how do you say it in a way that seems as if they haven't heard it before?"

                                                   -SONGTALK, PART 1 - 1991

"...The one political song that I've heard recently that I think is really good - and if I were to write a political song I would want to write one like it - is Peter Gabriel's "Biko." the reason it sounds great is because he writes about one man, one person, and he makes it a metaphor for a nation, which I think is important. In my way I try to do that - I write about small things as metaphors for larger ones. To me that's more effective than writing about the big picture in very general terms."

                                                     -L.A. WEEKLY - 1987

"I like the feel of the words in my mouth. I pick short words with hard syllables at the beginning and end. Sometimes I sing nonsense things until they come out meaning something..."

                                                      -PAPER - 1991

"I was watching a special on JFK. And I noticed people when they are moved by grief, that their language becomes very condensed and would start to rhyme. And they weren't being poetic. They were trying to express something that meant a lot to them. And I noticed that the quality of the language changed. Suddenly they started to speak in a way that you speak in when you're writing songs, if you're close to something truthful. It was eerie to watch and see that...

Also, a lot of religious writings are in verse. It makes me feel that there's something about rhythm and rhyme that gets close to the truth of things. I think it's connected..."

                                                     -SONGTALK, PART 2 - SPRING 1992

"If there was one message to my songs, it would be that things are not always as they seem to be. I fight stereotyping in all forms. If you scratch the surface of people, strip away the outsides, on the inside you see the similarities.

...Injustice and the idea that there are still things that happen that are degrading to people, like child abuse, makes me angry, makes me sick. And it makes me want to reveal it mand make it stop. I'm dedicated to preventing child abuse and (promoting) the things that Amnesty International is doing for Human Rights."

                                                      -DAILY HERALD - 1990

"...If I thought it was bad I would have sued them (DNA). But I thought it was funny and inventive and I never dreamed that it would be a big hit. And I was really happy when I realized that it was going to an audience that is normally not my audience. Black and Puerto Rican Kids in New York all heard it. I grew up in this kind of neighborhood, so it was ironic to me that without knowing it, my music had suddenly gotten into these other areas. To me it was like translating the song in another language.

...I get letters from people. They hate DNA. My feeling is, why not experiment. If you hate that, if you hate "Tom's Diner" by DNA then don't listen. Go back to SOLITUDE STANDING. It still exists in the original form. There's no reason to get hysterical. People feel upset but I don't feel that way. I think it's fun..."

                                                     -LANGUAGE - 1991

"People, when they listen, want to know what you're singing about. And if you know what it is, they'll know what it is. Not even that you have to say it, but if you know what it is, then they'll know. Because it will be there in the structure...

Images are what I find beautiful. I found that to be one of Dylan's strengths. Not that he said war must end, which he did, but when he said, "A hard rain's gonna fall," and used the images of "white ladder covered with water" and "white man walking a black dog." All of these images have mystery in them and they say racism must end and all men must be brothers. But they don't come out and say it. They have it within the images, which we recognize from our own lives.

And that to me is where his strength was. Not that he was a great politician, but that he was a great poet and he used those images to reveal those basic messages. Because it's not about messages. If it was just about printing messages you could just write a pamphlet or a bulletin on index cards and pass them out. So it's obviously not just messages that we're trying to give. It's got to work on some other level."

                                                      -SONGTALK, PART 1 - 1991

"When I was about 12, I saw this green military shirt at a rally. You could pick out a silkscreen to go on the back of it, and I picked one of a Vietnamese woman with a baby in one arm and a gun in the other. And this was my emblem.. I'd get up in the morning and I'd put on my jacket and I'd be very dressed for the day. This was my thing. It covered me from my neck down to my knees, and I felt like the coolest person in the world when I had my jacket on."

                                                       -MUSICIAN - 1990

"The images have their own context. If you sing that song ("Tired of Sleeping") in Czechoslovakia, where they just had a revolution, it has a whole different resonance than if you sing it in San Francisco, or in a college town. The college kids will feel that it's a psychedelic song and people in Czechoslovakia feel that you're talking about rising out of sleep and releasing yourself from oppression. Both readings are true."

                                                       -SONGTALK, PART2 - 1992

"...I am interested in images. that's why I put them down. They're not beautiful - (sometimes) they're ugly or shocking - but I feel that they haunt me and therefore they are something I need to recognize; to write them down for what they're worth."

                                                        -THE BOSTON GLOBE - 1990

"I wanted to take the folk tradition and make it contemporary, and toughen it up and harden the language, learn how to use words differently"

                                                         -LA TIMES - 1987

"...But you just can't sit around and sing all the old songs all the time. You can't. That's like saying we have grown all the food we need. But if htere's any reason for living, why not press forward?"

                                                         -SONGTALK, PART 2 - 1992  

"...There is one song called "Blood Sings" which is about looking at photographs of an uncle that I have never met. We look very much alike but I have never seen him in real life. And he had a very tragic life and a very short oneso this is what the song is about; how it feels to see yourself in someone else. Another song which is called "(If You Were) In My Movie" which is a very straightforward song and it's a sort of flirting song with someone. If you were in my movie: these are the parts you would play and the parts are: a detective, a gangster, a priest and a doctor. It's easy to see what the songs are about. They are about real things."

                                                       -LANGUAGE - 1991 

Up to Suzanne Vega Home Page

Submitted by Eric Szczerbinski

VegaNet@aol.com